We are proud to announce that one of our very own, Yingxing Huang, a former Futures in Advancement intern is the Bronze winner of the Circle of Excellence Innovative Alumni Programs award for her proposal for a Rutgers University Branded red envelope to be given to alumni donors to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Yingxing was an intern in the Donor Relations Office during the summer of 2016. She then went on to work as a Part Time Development Assistant for the Rutgers-Newark Advancement team.

The idea for the envelopes came to Yingxing when she was speaking to her mother who was telling Yingxing that she had to go purchase red envelopes to give out for the holiday. As a result of this conversation, Yingxing thought that it would be a great idea to create red envelopes with the Rutgers brand in honor of the Chinese New Year. It is tradition for older generations and married couples to give red envelopes with gold Chinese characters to their children and other unmarried people as a sign of good fortune during the Chinese New Year. She wanted to give these envelopes out to Rutgers Alumni in China as a token of gratitude for their generosity and to remind them that Rutgers will always be with them.

This idea turned into reality, when Nancy Cantor, the Chancellor of Rutgers Newark and Irene O’Brien, the Vice Chancellor for Advancement visited Chinese Alumni in China and handed out these envelopes to the Alumni. The envelopes were passed out in groups of eight, a symbol of good fortune in the Chinese culture, which was appreciated by the recipients. It Is this ingenuity and creativeness within the advancement field that we hope to foster in every intern that goes through the Futures in Advancement internship. Congratulations to Yingxing for her amazing accomplishment.